The present invention relates to an inspection method and inspecting apparatus, particularly to a technology suitable for inspecting the generation state of a defect such as a particle etc. in a manufacturing process by inspecting a defect such as a particle etc. produced in the manufacturing process for forming a pattern on a substrate to manufacture an object, such as a semiconductor manufacturing process, a liquid display element manufacturing process, and a printed circuit board manufacturing process, analyzing and taking measures.
In a semiconductor manufacturing process, a particle on a semiconductor substrate (wafer) may cause a failure such as an insulation failure or shot-circuit. Further, as semiconductor elements become miniaturized, if a microscopic particle is present, the microscopic particle may cause an insulation failure of a capacitor or breakdown of a gate oxide film. Such a particle comes to be mixed in, with taking various forms such as a particle produced from a moving part of a carrier device or a human body, a matter created by reaction of a process gas in a processing device, and a matter which is a chemical or a material mixing in.
Similarly, also in a liquid display element manufacturing process, if adherence of a particle to a pattern formed on a substrate of a liquid display element or any defects on the pattern occur, the substrate can not be used as a display element. Also, the same goes for a printed circuit board manufacturing process, and adherence of a particle may cause a short-circuit and insufficient connection on a pattern.
Conventionally, there is one technology, as disclosed in JP-A-62-89336, for detecting a particle on a semiconductor substrate of this type in which a laser beam is projected onto a semiconductor substrate to detect scattered light generated from a particle when the particle adheres to the semiconductor substrate and the detected light is compared with the inspection result obtained the adjacent inspection of a semiconductor substrate of the same product class, which eliminates disinformation from patterns and enables highly-sensitive and highly-reliable inspection of a particle and defect. Further, as disclosed in JP-A-63-135848, there is a technology in that a laser beam is projected onto a semiconductor substrate to detect scattered light generated from a particle when the particle adheres to the semiconductor substrate and the detected particle is analyzed by an analyzing technology such as laser photoluminescence or two dimension X-ray and Magnetic Resonance imaging (XMR) analysis.
Further, for a technology of inspecting such a particle as the above, a method is disclosed that a wafer is irradiated with coherent light and diffracted light produced from a repeating pattern on the wafer is removed by a spatial filter, thus the particle or defect without repeatability is highlighted to be detected. Further, a particle inspecting device is disclosed in JP-A-1-117024 in which a circuit pattern formed on a wafer is irradiated from the direction tilted at 45° to a group of main straight lines on the same pattern to prevent zero-order diffracted light from the group of main straight lines from entering the opening of an objective lens. In JP-A-1-117024, it is also described that the other group of straight lines other than the main straight lines are light-shielded by a spatial filter. Further, a conventional technology concerning a defect inspecting apparatus of a defect such as a particle etc. and a method thereof is disclosed in JP-A-2000-105203 in that a detection pixel size is changed by switching a detection optical system. A technology for measuring the size of a particle is disclosed in JP-A-2001-60607 and No. 2001-264264. JP-A-2004-177284 discloses a technology for detecting a defect on a thin film in that a laser beam is narrowed down to form a beam spot which is elongated in the direction perpendicular to a stage moving direction, and detection is performed in the direction perpendicular to an illumination direction.